Last year I reported the amazing experience from Bora Bora and this year I am glad to continue in that tradition. So with some outstanding minds around me, we had the privilege of examining our businesses and explore new improvement growth ideas. Below are my key take-aways from our September 2011 meetings of the Million Dollar Club in the beautiful Vila Aminta, located in Stresa, Italy, and situated on lake Maggiore:

Growth ideas:

• Reinvent yourself often.
• Become the catalyst to help reinvent your clients.
• Build and strengthen relationships with clients.
• Hold yourself and help hold your clients accountable.
• Consistent personal touch.
• Share best practices.
• Ask for referrals.
• Make sure your passion and enthusiasm is demonstrated through your work.
• Build communities.
• Build on your strengthens rather than correcting your weaknesses.
• Focus on creating new offerings to existing clients and then focus on existing and new offerings to new clients.
• The key to monetization of your intellectual property is to build and strengthen your brand.
• What action will you take right now? It’s all about execution!
• What opportunities exist that you may capitalize on?
• What apps should you consider developing and what is the value to your clients?
• Deliver “just-in-time” knowledge to your clients.
• Securing cash reserves to sustain your operation for many months will have a dramatic affect, which will free up your mind to focus on your business growth and vision.
• Explore new markets all the time.
• Create a powerful support system of people you trust.
• Does your team meet, don’t meet or exceed expectation? Reward those that exceed your expectations.
• Get rid of low margin business.
• Create rain makers.
• Create remarkable content and get it into the hands of buyers.
• Rather than interviewing people as podcasts, videos or articles, why not call them “conversations” which allows you to inject your own intellectual property and position you as a peer.
• To grow your business, get the right clients!

And some photos:

Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy

Left to right: Guido Quelle, Susanne Quelle, Suzanne Bates, Drew Yarro, Maria Weiss, Alan Weiss, Chad Barr, Stuart Cross, Phil Symchych, Kerri Symchych, Wendy Nour, David Nour

Chad Barr and Alan Weiss at the poolside reception

Chad, Stuart, Phil, Kerri, Guido, Susanne.

View of lake Maggiore

View of Lake Maggiore from my room. Doesn't get any better than that.

Each year, our Million Dollar club, arranged and facilitated by my friend, mentor and client Alan Weiss, heads out to an exotic place somewhere on this planet to engage in stimulating discussions about our businesses. We then get to tough it out and have an amazing time together discussing life balance and the future of civilization over great wine and outstanding dining experiences.

This year we have selected the Four Seasons resort in Bora Bora which was just spectacular.

So allow me please to share with you this experience, through these amazing moments captured in these photos. What a great way to also look back at this year and say THANK YOU to all of you.

Happy New Year!

Chad

Here is the story told through photos, text and captions below:

After almost 24 hours since leaving home, getting ready to board our last segment on Air Tahiti to Bora Bora

The Four Seasons resort (bottom left in this photo) and our amazing suite awaits our arrival

The only way to get to the hotel from the airport is by using this water taxi, well swimming was out of the question at this point.

Checking into the Four Seasons resort

The gorgeous view and the resort reception area

This is home for the next week. The amazing view and the soothing sound of the water in the lagoon. This is my kind of "survivor" week! I am going to learn to tough this out

The astonishing view from our deck at sunset

This was our private island which was the standard view from the pool. Well the latter part of the sentence is accurate.

A night time view of the over water bungalow suites

There is a positive side to waking up at 4AM and being jet-lagged. You get some amazing photos before sun sunrise.

While anxiously waiting for the sunrise, I’ve noticed this bird at the corner of my deck, starring at the water. All of the sudden, it took off, dove into the water and was fortunate to get his meal.

Innocent fish gazing or getting ready for breakfast?

Breakfast it is!

And finally capturing the sunrise at the one end of my suite

Probably the water taxi transporting the amazing help staff at the resort

The sun is finally shining

Just another typical day

This is the view outside our bedroom door that we awoke to each day. How could you ever have a bad day?

It's time to check out the pool and our private island - The Mrs. and I.

One of the dedicated waitresses at the resort. I am told she won the local beauty contest.

My favorite exotic morning fruit.

Each day our group (Alan Weiss, Suzanne Bates, Chad Barr, Andrew Sobel, Rob Nixon, Michael Sheargold, Shane McLucas and the spouses) got together for our exhilarating brainstorming sessions. We explored and shared innovative ideas, existing and new intellectual property, future trends as well as discussed our evolving business models and how to dramatically improve what we do for our clients. What I’ve noticed is that after three years of being together, our group has reached a maturity level that allowed and enabled us to be direct with each other and “push” ourselves.

After our morning sessions, we spent our time bathing in the sun, more intellectual discussions in the pool or the beach, explored the amazing property or took the boat to the island across the lagoon for dinners:

Evening activities. Boat ride across the lagoon for dinners and discussions:

Alan and Maria Weiss

Chad and Laurel Barr

Suzanne and Drew Bates

Michael Sheargold and Shane McLucas

Andrew and Mary Jane Sobel

Rob Nixon, Michael Sheargold and Andrew Sobel

Our waitresses, or were they helping with the food preparation?

Just wanted to whet your appetite or perhaps mine

Local art at one of the restaurants

After dinner, on one of the return evening trips to the resort, I see Alan Weiss at the helm navigating our boat. It's good that we all had a bit of wine!

The reaction on my wife's face when she found out that Alan Weiss is in charge of navigating the boat at night

All things must come to an end to let in the greater things. It is departure time from this paradise on earth.

Catching the boat ride back to the airport

Spending the night in Papeete, Tahiti and one more sunset to capture before the night show and the flights back home

An amazing Polynesian show at the hotel the night before our departure

Got on the Continental Saturday morning early flight from Cleveland to Newark and then continuing to London.  The comfortable Business First accommodation allowed me to relax, listen to my favorite iPhone music (about 8000 selections to choose from), catch up on my reading and continue my preparation for the New Product Experience I am conducting with Alan Weiss next week in Rhode Island. This week in London is going to be an outstanding week as five of my very close colleagues and clients: Dr. Guido Quelle from Germany, Libby Wagner from Seattle, Washington, Phil Symchych from Canada and Stuart Cross from the UK are meeting here with Dr. Alan Weiss to finish our certifications as Master Mentors, a new service we are going to offer to our clients.

During my first day (Monday) in London, my friend Libby Wagner and I, got a chance to visit Windsor Castle, the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms and Buckingham Palace. Amazing and fascinating places and history.

Here are some of Churchill’s wit that resonated with me:

“When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting”

“I have a tendency against which I should perhaps, be on my guard, to swim against the stream:

In 1933, as Hitler’s Nazi part came to power in Germany, Churchill asked: “Where shall we be in 1940?”

And here is another of his quote that I believe represents what true leaders are made of:
“I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial … I was sure I should not fail”

Windsor castle commentary by Libby Wagner. For a moment I thought the guards were going to escort her away:

St. George Chapel and view of Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle

Amazing art inside Windsor Castle

State dining room at Windsor Castle:

Guard by St. George Chapel

What a Royal Mail box looks like

Houses of Parliament from St. James’s Park

The gates of Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

I’ve recently attended Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Club gathering in beautiful St. Lucia. Surrounded by the gorgeous nature and an amazing group of people: My wife, Alan Weiss, seven other members of the Million Dollar Club and their spouses and partners. We met in the mornings, discussed business, best practices, intellectual properties and ideas to improve our lives and businesses. It was by far the most advanced learning experience I have ever experienced with honest and successful colleagues committed to help me grow. Below are my few takeaways and goals I have committed to. I am sharing this with you, with the hope that it is of help to some and a better way to hold me accountable.

Takeaways:

• Productize my business to complement the concept of the accelerant curve. (more on that soon)
• Commit to the things I must let go in order to reach the highest level of success.
• Be more directional instead of being opportunistic.
• Don’t tell people everything I know but what they need to know.
• To reduce my labor intensiveness: 1. streamline my work 2. transfer work to clients 3. delegate to staff and outsource 4. discard when unnecessary or turn down business you do not need.
• Determine what I want life to look like and then build the business to support it.
• Manage myself out of the business, increase my virtual team, clone myself as much as possible in sales & marketing, leverage my staff to the highest level possible and hold them accountable for outcomes and results. Delegate all that I should and could.
• Create more powerful alliances.
• When developing my marketing content, make sure it focuses on current times and my client challenges.
• Develop case studies that enable clients to relate to them.
• When promoting a book, offer an autograph option for extra charge.
• Create a list of journalists and send them press releases.
• I am a business strategist, who leverages technologies to help my clients accelerate their growth which fits beautifully with becoming one of Alan Weiss’s master mentors and developing a new coaching club for my best clients and push them to higher level successes.
• I am going to start promoting a new brand: “The king of all kings of social media.”
• Schedule systematic and better follow-ups with clients and develop an action plan which can be also delegated to one of my staff.
• I have great intellectual property (IP) which I will develop much more of and productize the heck out of.
• Print my goals and have them display prominently on my desk.
• When struggling with my long, 1st priority, to do list, I will pick out two and get started and then pick out two more. It does not matter which two I pick. Just do it.
• Find a quite place (often) and do all I can to finish my set priorities the quickest possible way and then enjoy the rest of the day. My colleague and client, Rob Nixon from Australia, uses this technique until his laptop battery runs out. With my new Macbook pro that is a problem. Battery lasts too darn long.
• Keep my schedule and calendar sacrosanct.
• Routinize my input and customize my output. Also, if it is worth doing again, systematize it.
• Send my ideas to my team and let them make it happen.
• Develop more diagnostic tools.
• On the last day, I asked each of the members of the group to take a couple of minutes, pull out our crystal ball and in our areas of expertise articulate the future as we see it. VERY POWERFUL STUFF. I then realized that we are our clients’ future and we represent their blueprint to success.
• All great things must come to an end to let in the WOW things.
• The Million Dollar Club is the most awesome think-tank / mastermind group I have ever attended. The relationships and friendships created are priceless. Thank you all and thank you Alan for making this an amazing reality.

My Goals:

• Purchase a focused and high quality database and market to it aggressively. Create web landing pages with videos and make special offers of value. Become a marketing machine. Better penetrate to my associated communities and help my clients reach higher level of successes. Leverage alliances and develop a new workshops with and without my alliances.
• Finish the book I am co-authoring with Alan Weiss and start thinking about my next book.
• Leverage NSA by speaking to local chapters and national conferences.
• Productize my business. Fill my accelerant curve with workshops, booklets, books, webinars alliances such as Alan & the Gang which will be launched 1st Qtr. 2010 and Million Dollar Web Sites and more.
• Push, re-invent and further develop my dream team.
• Promote by new brand of business strategist, master mentor and the coaching club.
• Launch the new amazing web site for The Chad Barr Group with podcasts and videos and …
• Fitness, spirituality and life balance upgrades with my wife, kids, grand kids, family, friends and colleagues. Help my wife pursue her passions.

Below are three videos that will give you a sense of the amazing time I spent in St. Lucia with members of Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Club. In the mornings, we discussed our businesses, how to reach the next level, we shared our intellectual property with each other as well as shared our interpretation of what the future looks like in our areas of expertise. In the afternoons and evenings we relaxed and enjoyed a great time with our spouse while continuing our fabulous discussions.

Listen to what participants had to say about this amazing experience:

Our MDC friend, Michael Sheargold, discusses letting go at the peak of the Piton Mountain in St. Lucia and at the peak of Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Club. Prior to playing the video and by looking at the picture below, can you tell who is the member of the million dollar club and who does not care if he is?

A couple of minutes ago I decided to quickly research the web and see what people are publishing about growing an email distribution list. I launched my browser and googled: “How to grow your distribution list” and to my pleasant surprise I noticed that the second result listed at the top of the Google page was one of my own blog posts: “How to Grow Your Email Distribution List” which I wrote back in March of 2007 and is still a great post I must add.

That triggered my thinking and sharing with you the following points:

1. Have you Googled yourself lately? This is one of the topics I discuss during my speeches. Why not use Google and possibly other search engines to research the web and discover: what is being said about you, what your competition is doing, how is your brand improving, where are your articles positioned? Get the point? You may be pleasantly surprised as well as learn what others are doing.
2. I constantly think of new ideas for my new articles as well as refine existing ones I have previousely written. I then modify and improve my original posts and either write a new blog post to feature this revised article or use Twitter to announce it. For example, four days ago I added more call to actions to the “What’s your call to action” thread I wrote a while back. I used Twitter to announce this, which is found here, and is also automatically linked to my Facebook account. This allows me to revive and repurpose older posts (as I am doing here) while publishing improved newer content.
3. Writing ideas are all around us, we just need to pay better attention to our surroundings.

One of my dear and senior clients sends his emails all typed in uppercase or capital letters, perhaps not realizing the internet standard for shouting is all uppercase (although I am not sure who invented that standard). Unbeknown to me, one of my younger staff members received several emails for this client thinking the client may have been unhappy and is “yelling” at him. An interesting conversation followed with each one of them as I was trying to bridge the generational gap.

Although we all live in a diverse world offline, the internet has connected people online in ways that allow us to interact with other people we may or may not meet in person. Some may make the assumption that all internet users use technology the same way as we do to communicate. This assumption needs to be examined more closely so we become aware of the need to be sensitive online as we may already be in our “offline” world. There are cultural, generational and gender differences among people—not to mention the all-important difference of technological awareness, exposure and capability that affects how people use and interpret the internet.

On Facebook—one of the most popular social networking sites—it is easy for people to connect with friends, colleagues and clients so they may stay in touch. It is quite common for people to change their online status and to comment frequently about what they do at the moment. I find the phenomena of mundane comments such as: “I am having breakfast”; or “going to workout”; or “it’s time to go to sleep” not only silly, but somewhat obnoxious, a waste of brain cells, digital ink and Internet energy.

Some time ago, I actually used my status on Facebook to post a simple yet provocative question: “I am wondering why are most so addicted to these silly status messages and who out there really cares?” I did get several replies. Some on Facebook and some in my private email. Some were nice and tried to explian their position yet others suggested I don’t get it. I’ve come to realize that many (perhaps those fitting the friendly stalker mindset personality) love to read what others are doing, spend much of their time following others and also use it to find out where to hang out with their friends. Moreover, some love to see pictures of others and often request you post them when you attend events. My personal preference is to post and read helpful, valuable thoughts and tips and even watch good quality entertaining moments. Since I speak, write and consult on this topic, I do make a strong attempt to be aware of those online differences so I may communicate effectively with others.

So whether it is the realization that uppercase emails do not necessarily mean the person is yelling at us, I also realize the important fact that it is often impossible to interpret the sender’s voice intonation in emails. I suggest we recognize that even or especially online some are introverts and some extroverts and there are many behavioral styles and preferences. I am respectful of people’s Right to Interact, Right to Surf, and Right to Post. Yet as I recently wrote on one of my Twitter posts: “You are right. I only pay attention to the brilliant stuff, the other I have learned to ignore. Now what was it that you said?”

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

I just returned for another absolutely outstanding event – The Million Dollar Consulting College™ Graduate School held at the gorgeous Ritz Carlton in Naples Florida.

“These people represent the finest talent in the profession,” noted Alan Weiss, Ph.D. who conducts this college. “They are the best of the best in terms of methodology, integrity, client satisfaction, and contributions to the profession. And they are highly innovative.”

As both a college presenter and a participant, I was fortunate to be among 12 of world-class consultants and got to spend three intense days working on challenging case studies, role-plays and group exercises. On day two, we were given a couple of real-life critical business challenges by the management of the Ritz Carlton. It was fascinating and a tremendous learning experience to witness how we applied our knowledge, problem solving abilities and experiences and worked as a strong team to solve these challenges while present the solution to the delight of the Ritz’s management.

My presentation, “Advanced Internet and Technologies Made Simple” focused on practical technologies to help consultants in their business. I started with a short video of one of our clients from Australia, Michael Harrison. Last year, prior to becoming a client, I received an email from Michael inquiring about our services. After a brief email exchange we started a Skype session which instantaneously allowed us to be connected between the US and Australia while clearly hearing and seeing each other. I demonstrated this technology to the group and asked Michael to record a brief introduction. Here it is:

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I demonstrated the ease of using the Flip Video to record workshops and testimonials and immediately making them available on the web, such as in this demonstration. Thank you Libby Wagner, Dr. Guido Quelle, Kim Wilkerson, Phil Symchych and Katherine Radeka for the permission to use this.

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Click here to download my presentation converted to pdf document (9.47MB)

Dr. Alan Weiss brilliantly shared with us many exciting concepts. Among them:

1. The importance of focusing on media pipeline just as we are on our prospect pipeline.
2. How to reduce labor intensiveness.
3. The need to constantly develop new intellectual property.
4. Why we need to get our of our comfort zone.
5. Importance of process over content.

On the last day, we had the honor and rare chance of seeing Walt Mossberg, the technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He delivered a fascinating 90 minutes presentation. Among the many topics he discussed was the analogy of the Internet to an Electrical grid. Similar to our electricity where you just plug in such devices while some are always connected, the same is with the Internet. Although we have made some tremendous progress, within a few years, EVERYTHING will be ON the Internet. Meaning, you will not have to say: “Are you online?” or “Let’s connect” since the Internet will always be on and for all the devices and gadget we will be using.

Finally, some awesome sunset pictures I took. Life is Good!

I just came across a site loaded with interesting content and terrific value. Another creative idea from Guy Kawasaki, innovative author, writer and entrepreneur. Click on this link www.alltop.com a site, which collects all the top stories on the web and organizes them in logical categories. It is like having your own table of contents to your favorite topics.

(Click on image to enlarge)

When visiting Utah last week and attending my son’s parents conference, several of us parents decided to have dinner together. I was seated next to my wife on one side and one of the parents on the other. He is a retired professor of many years from one of the famous and top universities in this country. I started the conversation asking him about his life, teaching position at the university, his kid at the school and other great questions (at least I think so) in order to engage him. He seemed to enjoy being asked the questions, talk about his life and he was very talkative. Yet it felt really weird. It was not a conversation, it was just me asking a series of questions and feeling like I am interviewing him. Perhaps he felt interrogated but I don’t think so.

After about 45 minutes of hearing him talk, I decided to stop asking questions and see if he may ask me a question or two.

There was silence.

After about 5 minutes he looks at me and says: “Let me ask you a question”
Excited, I was for a moment as I heard my voice say: “SURE, GO AHEAD”
He then proceeds and says: “Since you are one of the new parents at the school here, do you have any questions for me?”
“NO”, I shouted. Turning to my wife and asking her how her day is going.

This video reminds me of some of the training sessions we conduct for our clients and even some of the few I personally attended.

I’ve attended the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas and got to meet some terrific people including Marc Cuban and Matt Mullenweg. Here are some best practices ideas I would like to share with you:

1. It’s a great professional development tool for you and your company. It is a rapid publishing platform focusing on delivering wisdom and knowledge while building a community.
2. To be a successful blogger, you have to be unique, passionate about your topics and love what you do.
3. Post often and at least 3 times per week, or not at all.
4. Talk about compelling topics people are interested in.
5. Solve people problems and be the expert in your niche. Introduce a problem and solve it. Use video and audio. Take a look at this great example from Tim Carter of Ask The Builder.
6. Blogs that start with www.AskTheNAME.com where NAME represents your line of expertise, are a great idea.
7. Ask yourself, what problems is my blog solving?
8. Do not start a blog that you don’t care about or that you are not going to post on and often.
9. Comment on other blogs, which also creates a link back to you blog and drives traffic to you.
10. Refer to other blogs and topics on your own blog and writing.
11. When visitors comment on your blog, welcome them by responding with your own comment, email them and the ones that comment often consider featuring them on your blog.
12. Do not “force” people to register to enter a comment on your blog. But consider moderating and approving each comment.
13. The reason people don’t care about radio is because it is not niche focused. Podcasts on the other hand allow you to listen to content you care about and listen to it wherever and whenever you want. You can also fast-forward a Podcast, pause it anytime or simply delete which is not possible with a radio station.
14. Google loves blogs and solving problems sites.

Ideas to make money with your blog (monetize):

1. Create credibility so people contact you
2. Sell your products and services
3. Affiliate marketing
4. Direct Ad Sales
5. Find a Sponsor
6. Google AdSense

Richard St. John gave a terrific presentation at TED discussing his top eight points of what leads to success.

Here are his Secrets to success:

1. Passion – Do it for love and not money. The money the comes anyway.
2. Work – It takes hard work with much fun.
3. Focus – Practice, practice, practice.
4. Persist – Through failure as well as Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.
5. Ideas – Listen, observe, be curious, ask questions, problem solve and make connections.
6. Good – Get damn good at what you do.
7. Push – Physically and mentally to overcome self-doubt, shyness, feelings of whether you are good or smart enough.
8. Serve - Deliver to others something of value.

Click below to view the presentation.